Literary Narrative Study Of Chinese Films On Social Floaters--Take Jia Zhangke's "Hometown Trilogy" As The Example

What this paper researched are the Chinese films on social floaters since 1990's. Social floaters are some kinds of marginal colonies out of the basic social structure. Since 1980's, the changing historical conditions make the soil for social floaters to come out and expand. The lives of social floaters are unsteady badly, and they are always excluded out of the central labour market, so they have become a kind of latent menace to the society. A school of Chinese young directors who greatly concerned with the social crisis have begun to pay their attention to the social floaters. As the memorial method of a special era, the films on social floaters are one of the important parts of the Chinese films since 1990's, and worth while to research very well. What is more significant is that they have constructed the history 2 of the modern cities which is the complementarity of the mainstream culture, so they bring forth the complexity and chanciness of the current Chinese changing society, and open out a more actual and all-around society. These young directors' innovation on film conception and narration is the concernful symptom of "the sixth Chinese film era" after Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, and they have aroused the broad attention and concern in the world. But this species of films mostly do not accord with the regulations for shooting films, and have not the right to be screened in public. So they currently spread abroad by piratical DVD or internet, and at the same time, the research of this kind of films is very absent, especially in the domestic central books and periodicals.Literary narration is the foundation of filmic narration. This paper has chosen the films "Hometown Trilogy" directed by Jia Zhangke as the examples, and has detailedly analyzed and criticised the narrative characteristic of Chinese films on social floaters. I have summarized six points about the narration of Jia Zhangke's films. They are three-act structure seemingly in harmony but actually at variance; no suspenses; exoteric final; undefined third party; metaphor; no potentially heroical character. Besides, this paper has analyzed the inner contradiction of the Jia Zhangke's narrative consciousness, and has looked forward the future development of the Chinese films on social floaters. Jia Zhangke is against the histrionic elements, and he work hard to achieve the attendant effect. But in fact, camera has been never absolute impersonal, so it is determinate that his films on social floaters have been some fabled and subjective. Even if these films were admitted to be on show in public, the box office certainly would not be admirable, because their narration do not accord with the popularly enjoying custom. According to Zhang Yuan's precedent, after being admitted to screen films by government, these directors must chang their narrative concept based on the marketable requirement and audiences' custom in order to overcome some limitation of their narration. On the other hand, the correlative departments of the government should pay more attention and direction to them energetically.